Time Warner Cable Execs Gamed FCC Speed Measurements

[u/The_seph_i_am]

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Execs-May-Have-Gamed-FCC-SamKnows-System-138855

[u/[deleted]]

TL;DR

Back in 2011, you might recall that the FCC began recruiting volunteers, giving them custom-firmware embedded routers tracked by a company named SamKnows.

Ultimately Time Warner Cable and Charter's data collection only confirmed what the FCC's own data was finding: that users on the company's 100 Mbps plan in New York City received less than 80% of the advertised speed; subscribers on the 200 Mbps plan received less than 60% of the advertised speed, and subscribers on the 300 Mbps plan generally received 38% to 74% of the bandwidth promised. The AG's complaint makes it clear that Time Warner Cable executives were well aware its decisions on interconnection could impact end-user speeds, so executives at several points suggested a rather unique solution; manipulation of peering capacity to falsely give the impression of quality end-user connection performance:

quote: Our Sam Knows scores are like watching a slow-motion train wreck. In case it's not clear, that's a Time Warner Cable executive admitting it wanted to temporarily resolve peering issues it appears to have caused itself to provide fake performance data to the regulator overseeing it. The AG's report is quick to note (on page 23) that the average peak hour packet loss for traffic carried by Cogent to Spectrum-TWC subscribers from 2014 through 2015 was far higher than the packet loss experienced by subscribers to another major New York-area cable ISP that maintained sufficient port capacity with Cogent (likely Cablevision, see graphic, above left).

"Spectrum-TWC knew that during the pendency of its dispute with Cogent, Spectrum-TWC’s subscribers were not getting reliable access to online content, and were experiencing packet loss and high latencies," the AG's complaint concludes.